LSU did not get the most obvious target, Lane Kiffin, for the offensive coordinator position, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Instability at coordinator added to the LSU quarterback problems that existed before Cam Cameron’s arrival, and that’s what we would have gotten. It’s possible LSU could have gotten Kiffin as the next coordinator by presenting an attractive enough offer, but it would have only temporarily postponed his next head coaching job.

Also, one of the arguments for going after Kiffin was that even if he wasn’t with LSU permanently, at least we would have gotten him away from Alabama. He left Alabama anyway. Call it sour grapes if you like – I think LSU was looking more closely at Canada than they were at Kiffin in the first place – but I honestly think this turn of events is in LSU’s favor.

Before I get to the positives and negatives of his past performance, some people might be nervous because Canada has made a series of stops as well. I think that’s less of a concern because he’s never been a head coach, and he’s never coached in the NFL. Offensive coordinator for one of the best programs (not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but only a few have multiple national championships since 2003) is his highest aspiration for the time being. Also, as I’ll get into, I think this is the situation that might fit him best. Canada probably isn’t the type who would fit in the other places.

First I wanted to address the concerns that Canada has moved around too much. Canada’s previous moves made sense in pursuing the type of job he has just attained. He did take a bit of a step back when he left Wisconsin for North Carolina State, it wasn’t his fault he got there a year before Bret Bielema decided to go to Arkansas.

I’m not sure why he didn’t follow Bielema to Arkansas, but I doubt it had to do with being unable to coach the offense well enough. ESPN said they “butted heads”, but it may have had more to do with the opportunity to coach with former NIU coach Dave Doeren again. Although they were outmatched in the Rose Bowl, his Badger team had scored 70 points in the 2012 Big Ten championship game and averaged about 30 points per game.

Canada’s departure from North Carolina State was also not his decision. After a rocky first year with the Wolfpack in which Canada couldn’t seem to find a reliable quarterback, the team averaged 30.0 and 32.2, respectively, in the next two seasons.

The only sense anyone could make of the N.C. State firing as far as performance was that there were a few key games with relatively little scoring: 13 against Virginia Tech, 13 against Louisville, and 17 against Florida St. Louisville and Florida St. had reasonably good defenses in 2015, so it seems strange to fire a guy over one questionable game, but that’s apparently what they did. Also, I would note that all three point totals would have been enough for LSU to beat Alabama this season, and the Florida St. point total would have been enough to beat Wisconsin and Florida as well.

I would venture to guess that Canada will benefit from the kind of defense Dave Aranda seems to be running at LSU. Canada said during the press conference that if the pace of the game dictates winning 10-7 he has no problem with that. That reminds me… Canada and Aranda coached against each other in 2012. Final score: Wisconsin 16, Utah St. 14. I guess Aranda and the Aggies did a good enough job in that game that most of the USU coaching staff was hired when Bielema left for Arkansas.

I also liked that Canada doesn’t seem to be a purist in terms of what “system” he’s going to run. He’ll use multiple running backs in the backfield, he’ll throw to tight ends, and he’ll let the quarterback run if that’s in his skill set. Here is some more detailed information about what Canada likes to do.

Canada has been an offensive coordinator for 10 consecutive seasons. Before going to Wisconsin, he also had success at Northern Illinois in 2011, where his offenses averaged 38 points per game. His tenure at Indiana was a mixed bag. Canada helped to coach the Hoosiers to their first bowl game since 1993 in his first year (2007) after the death of head coach Terry Hoeppner in the offseason, but his offenses did not average more than 25 points per game again until his last year there in 2010.

A little bit of additional trivia… Canada was also with the Hoosiers (as an undergraduate assistant) in that previous bowl year of 1993, and the man who brought Canada back to Indiana (as a QB coach) was actually former LSU head coach Gerry DiNardo, who preceded Saban. In his career, Canada has also been a position coach for tight ends, wide receivers, and running backs.

Recruiting

I don’t usually comment on recruiting until the ink is dry and sometimes not even then, but with coaching turmoil, I think it’s an important thing to check on.

Orgeron kept some recruits guessing when he said at one point he wanted a pro-style quarterback and at another he wanted the spread, but it seems Canada can offer the best of both. It’s a good sign that St. Stanislaus (MS) quarterback Myles Brennan is back on board. Brennan is a pro-style quarterback who set state records for passing but also has a decent amount of rushing yards.

Junior College wide receiver Stephen Guidry, who de-committed in the wake of the Miles firing, also recommitted to the Tigers. Guidry attends Hines Community College, also in Mississippi, but went to high school in Louisiana. The LSU depth chart at the position seems to be getting shallower. Travin Dural’s eligibility will expire, Jazz Ferguson will be transferring after being suspended, and Malachi Dupre may declare for the NFL draft. If so, that will mean that only two wide receivers will be returning as upperclassmen.

The only other recruit (unless I’m misinformed) who de-committed from the Tigers since the Miles firing was Lowell Narcisse, a dual-threat quarterback from St. James (LA), who is also back on board as of this morning. I didn’t think he and Brennan would both want to come to LSU at the same time, but the more the merrier as far as I’m concerned. The last few years have shown us that you can’t always count on someone who appears to be the top guy, especially before they start taking snaps in a game.

Canada said he would use multiple-back sets. I’m not sure if that includes quarterbacks, but obviously there are some spread plays (as well as more traditional plays like halfback passes) where you’re not supposed to know whether a back will act like a quarterback or a running back, particularly not with the way Canada likes to change formations before the play.

SEC Country went into more detail about Narcisse and the rest of LSU’s potential key recruits. DandyDon (see the 12/19 update) also covered some of this.

I understand the Tigers have room for at least 5 more players and possibly up to 7.

Other Notes

This speaks for itself about two of my favorite NFL players at the moment.

I’d like to give credit to fullback JD Moore, who earned the Charles E. Coates Award given to the senior who demonstrated the highest commitment to scholarly work in combination with excellence on the field. You might not notice him during the game as a casual fan, but he’s amazing when someone slows down the film and points him out.

The team MVP award went to senior linebacker Duke Riley. I don’t know how you replace guys like that in isolation, but that’s where teamwork and player development come in.

I know intricate detail about Xs and Os and recruiting aren’t historically my focus on this blog, but I have a renewed interest in how next year’s team is taking shape with the coaching changes.

I don’t see us winning the SEC, especially with 5 conference road games next season, but we were in every game this year. But if we become the type of team to win close games by converting scoring opportunities (we had some close games with late yards but not late points), anything could happen.

Regardless, I believe next season can be the start of something special. The last national championship came under a newish head coach and an innovative offensive coordinator (although Crowton never really found another quarterback to run his system after Matt Flynn left).

A little later than I prefer, but I thought some Eastern Time sports fans may be up due to the baseball.

I honestly wasn’t surprised by anything in the CFP rankings, so that’s why I didn’t write a special blog last night. I do have something I wanted to rant a little bit about before getting to the SEC Wednesday blog though.

I was confident a team with a loss was going to be in the top 4. Obviously I had Ohio St. in the top 4, but A&M was a very close fifth. I guess they felt more comfortable with a loss to Alabama than a loss to Penn St. for obvious reasons.

Although I have them very high—and I’ve discussed why multiple times—I wasn’t expecting Western Michigan to be in the top 20, but I’m encouraged they were ranked at all since the CFP is notoriously skeptical of Group of Five teams.

I’m also encouraged WMU is the top Group of Five (G5) team.

I’m not sure what it will take for the committee to buy into the G5 teams more. Maybe it just needs to try harder to appoint people from G5 backgrounds. G5 teams have won a lot of games out of conference against major teams. They’ve done well in the major bowls in the past. I wanted to just give a list of the results. Pre-bowl records in parentheses:

The G5 teams usually had one fewer loss than the opposition. I would point out that Northern Illinois and Hawaii had atrocious schedules and only got so high on account of their record.

It pre-dated this blog, but I can assure you I was a Hawaii detractor the whole year in 2007, and you may remember how I felt about Northern Illinois. I had the Huskies 17th (behind Florida St.) going into the bowls that year. I had stronger loss penalties than I do this year, so now they would be even lower. It’s not worth the trouble of searching, but I believe I said here that they weren’t really 17th-best.

I’d also like to mention that Northern Illinois went 1-1 against P5 teams in 2012, but the win was against Kansas, which finished 1-11. In 2007, Hawaii’s only game against a P5 opponent was a close win over a Washington team that also finished with a losing record.

This year, by contrast, it appears that both Western Michigan and Boise St. have defeated at least one eventual P5 bowl team apiece. Northwestern still has to win two games, but Purdue and Illinois only have two conference wins combined. The Wildcats also play un-ranked Minnesota, which has the same conference record (3-2) as they do. Western Michigan and Boise St. are both 2-0 against P5 opponents regardless.

Unfortunately, the Texas A&M defense allowed a touchdown after holding the other Aggies to 3 points over the first three quarters. This caused the closest New Mexico St. game against an SEC team other than Kentucky in several years.

Georgia hung tough for a half, but I was very surprised the Bulldogs were shut out by the Gators in the second half.

I knew when South Carolina scored in the fourth quarter, Tennessee most likely was not going to beat the spread, but I thought the Vols would come back to win until the very end.
Thankfully the reverse happened with Auburn, who trailed after every quarter but the fourth, which they won 13-0 to beat the spread.

I mentioned Kentucky earlier. The Wildcats are still not a great team, but they’re beating the spread every week. I don’t know what the bookies were thinking with Missouri.

Similar to last week, I was 5-1 in picking winners and 2-3 against the spread. (Mississippi St. won an FCS game against Samford.) This brings my records to 64-12 overall and 30-35-1 against the spread.

Next Week

Rather than wasting words, I’ll just let you know when I pick an upset win below.

I’m picking Georgia Southern to beat the spread of 27.5 against Ole Miss. It could be a blowout, but the Eagles took Georgia to overtime last year. Ole Miss beat a similar team in Memphis this year but only won by 20. Also this year, Georgia Southern’s only game against a P5 opponent was a 35-24 loss to Georgia Tech.

Despite falling short of the spread against New Mexico St., I think Texas A&M wins by at least 14 this week. The Aggies beat Auburn by 13 (on the road) and Arkansas by 21 (at a neutral site). The only thing that worries me is that the Aggies only won at South Carolina by 11. I’m put somewhat at ease by what I think is the most similar Mississippi St. game, which was when they hosted Auburn about a month ago and lost by 24.

Vanderbilt is a decent team that has fought admirably in the Commodores’ three conference losses so far, but they haven’t played an opponent as good as Auburn yet. If you can lose in Atlanta by 31, you can lose on the Plains by more than 26 (even). Also, I think Arkansas is better than Vanderbilt (albeit not by a whole lot), and I don’t need to recount what happened to them a couple of weeks ago.

Speaking of Arkansas, the Hogs host Florida, which is now on track to win the SEC East. The Gators even have a loss to spare. Arkansas should be fresh after a week off though, and Florida hasn’t performed that great on the road (loss to Tennessee by 10 and beat Vandy by 7). Gators by 3, which is less than the 5.5-point spread.

I think South Carolina is improving and Missouri is getting worse. If it were @Missouri, I’d think about it, but Gamecocks -7 all day long.

With Tennessee, I’ll just go with the win of course since there is no ESPN line for FCS games.

Georgia is favored by 2 over Kentucky. Although the Wildcats always seem to disappoint in the end, they’ve treated me well the past few games while picking Georgia has been a disaster most of the year. Kentucky to win.

Marcus Randall, not to be confused with JaMarcus Russell, may have engineered the “Bluegrass Miracle” in 2002 but could not even get the Tigers on the board against Alabama that year.

Alabama is favored by almost an overtime-safe margin (very rare to win by 8 in OT), so I have to take LSU. The worst two LSU teams of the Miles tenure (2008 and 2014) both lost to the Tide in overtime at home. Other recent home games in the series for LSU were a loss by 4 in 2012 and a win by 3 in 2010. I really don’t think this will be the worst LSU does in the series at home since 2002.

I can’t countenance LSU losing to Alabama again, so I’ll tell myself it won’t happen this year even though the prudent pick is Alabama to win. The best argument I have is the gambler’s fallacy: LSU has to win a marginal game against Alabama at some point; and as I said, I don’t think this is the first team to lose by more than one possession at home to the Tide since 2002, which incidentally was Nick Saban’s worst team at LSU (8-5). I’ve plugged it a few times, but for more on the LSU-Alabama series, you know what to do.

There are a total of 39* teams that got some level of points in the Mock BCS standings linked to above. (I list 40 teams since Texas A&M was in the top 25 of one of the computer rankings, but they got no points since the highest rating is dropped)

Comments
I covered all the commentary I intended to cover Sunday morning, but I just wanted to note that I’m not making a new rankings blog after the Army-Navy game. I don’t expect any changes to the top 25. I will update my ratings site because obviously this would affect some lower teams, including Army and Navy themselves, and strengths of schedule.

This is my favorite SEC map so far.

Why the SEC Is Still #1 (despite going 5-6 against Power 5 conferences)

I will do a “conference report” for the season at some point (there may or may not be one before the bowls). This is the full one for last year to give you an idea, but I didn’t want to wait until then to make the basic argument that when looking at inter-conference play, the SEC is still the best conference overall; and it’s not even that close.

I mentioned this last week, but since then I’ve seen an increasing number of people say or suggest that the SEC must not be the best conference since it is 5-6 against other Power 5 opponents out of conference.

One thing that’s telling is they’re saying different conferences are #1, but many of them don’t really defend that, they just act really confident that whoever it is, it’s just for sure not the SEC.

It’s kind of like saying Alabama shouldn’t be #1—because they lost to Ole Miss, should have lost to LSU, and gave up over 600 yards against Auburn and (had those Tigers not settled for field goals so often) probably should have lost that one too—and then simply ignoring that any other team you would suggest is just as flawed if not more flawed.

To be fair, I’m not sure if they’re all talking about top to bottom. Maybe some think the combination of TCU, Baylor, and Kansas St. is better than the combination of Alabama, Mississippi St., and Ole Miss, for instance. As an aside, I would also argue with that assertion. The top three SEC teams are 2-1 against Auburn and the three Big XII teams are 0-1 against Auburn. I would also value beating WVU (which Baylor failed to do, by the way) and Boise St. above the one good out-of-conference win of TCU over Minnesota.

Five of the six Power 5 losses by the SEC were to teams that are currently ranked in a major poll. The only loss to a team from outside of the Power 5 conferences was by Vanderbilt, which went 0-8 in conference.

I have acknowledged that the loss by Missouri to Indiana (obviously the Power 5 team not in any major polls) was a bad one, but that was the #4 team in the SEC. I don’t see it as worse than the #1 team in the Big Ten losing to Virginia Tech, for instance.

As for the wins, three of the five came against ranked teams (and they came against teams in the top three of other conferences). These are SEC #7 LSU beating Big Ten #3 Wisconsin, SEC #5 Georgia beating ACC #3 Clemson, and SEC #6 Auburn beating Big XII #3 Kansas St.

You really have to use some tortured logic to say that any of those conferences belong ahead of the SEC. I know the ACC just beat four SEC teams (also, the ACC has almost as many bowl teams), but let’s consider what that looks like if the roles were reversed. Rather than it being the top 4 of the ACC versus numbers 5, 8, 10, and 13 of the SEC, let’s make it top 4 of the SEC versus numbers 5, 8, 10, and 13 of the ACC.

Does anyone seriously think the SEC is likely to lose one of those? Mississippi St./Boston College (the equivalent of Georgia/Georgia Tech) might be a good game, but people would make fun of Alabama and Missouri for playing these games. Ole Miss wouldn’t exactly be drowning in praises with a win either. They get almost no respect for having beaten Boise St. as it is.

As I mentioned, the SEC did beat the ACC in a game earlier this year (the equivalent match-up would be Boston College @ Ole Miss), so at best they would also have gone 1-4 but more likely 0-5.
I mentioned the SEC only lost one game outside of the Power 5 conferences. The ACC lost seven such games, including to such luminaries as Akron (by a bowl-eligible team) and ULM. The ACC also lost two games to unranked Power 5 conferences when it lost to Iowa and Maryland.

So since I’ve eliminated the others, the only conference you can even pretend might be as good as the SEC is the Pac-12.

I mentioned the SEC only lost to one Power 5 team that is not in the top 25 of either poll. Counting Notre Dame as Power 5, the Pac-12 lost three such games: Notre Dame, Boston College, and Rutgers. I also mentioned the SEC only lost to one team that was not in the Power 5. Again, the Pac-12 lost three such games: Colorado St., Nevada, and BYU. Meanwhile, the SEC has won 17 more games against other conferences than the Pac-12 has won.

I mentioned the SEC (and three teams toward the middle of the SEC at that) beating three teams that are currently ranked. The Pac-12 has only beaten one such team, and it was Oregon, the Pac-12 champions, over Michigan St., the Big Ten East runners-up.

The only strong win against teams not in the Power 5 for the Pac-12 is UCLA’s win over Memphis. An SEC team also beat Memphis. That was Ole Miss, who as mentioned also beat Boise St. Another SEC team beat East Carolina, and yet another beat Central Florida.

You can’t honestly tell me the list of wins versus the list of losses favors the Pac-12.

My argument is also backed up by computer ratings. Kenneth Massey has a survey that includes 105 objective computer formulas. The SEC is #1 in 104 of them. (The SEC is also #1 in the three major Top 25 listings, so that’s why it says 108 when you click on the link.)

The Pac-12 is consistently in the top 2, but #2 is more questionable than #1. Just from skimming, it looks like the Pac-12 is #3 or lower in about one out of five.

Judge for yourself, but just so you know, the one exception put Georgia Tech #3. How well would that have gone over if the Yellowjackets were going to the Rose Bowl to play Oregon and Florida St. were going to the Sugar Bowl? It had TCU and Baylor #8 and #9. They’re both behind Georgia.

I don’t mean to make fun. Running an objective ratings system is hard work, and they look for and measure different things. I mention this because I didn’t want to just say they were wrong because they’re overwhelmingly outnumbered. I think people can recognize that this is not a system that agrees with what just about anyone (outside of Georgia anyway) thinks of as how the rankings should be configured.

I know this is early in the day for most of you, but I’m not the one who decided to make the selection show so early for west coasters like me. I’ll just have to find out the final verdict after I get up and have breakfast.

I’ll just do my regular top 25 blog later in the week, but for reference here are my ratings results. I use the numbers there below.

Final Resumes
(Teams in my Top 7 apart from Boise St.; wins are limited to those over the top 60.)

There should be no serious doubt about Florida St., Alabama, and Oregon, so I’ll skip to talking about the fourth semifinal team.

Baylor’s win wasn’t really in doubt for the much of the second half, but I don’t think it was anything like the kind of exclamation point Ohio St. had. I had Ohio St. in the top 4 to begin with, so I am still convinced Baylor does not belong. Virginia Tech is a worse team to lose to than WVU, but my feeling is the two additional wins over the top 50 make up for this.

I respect the opinion that TCU belongs ahead of Ohio St., although obviously I don’t agree with the conclusion. I think Ohio St. just showed emphatically they can play like a top 4 team. Admittedly, they showed all those weeks ago they can also lose to a mediocre team at home by two touchdowns, but at some point, the other 12 games taken as a whole should be more important. One top-25 win vs. 2 and 5 top-50 wins vs. 4 make up for that. TCU played the best of any of these teams in their loss, but actually that might have been their best game. I just haven’t seen them look like a top team often enough, particularly in light of their difficulties against West Virginia and Kansas in the month of November.

Transitioning out of the semifinal discussion, I don’t think Marshall and Boise St. are getting the respect that previous “group of five” teams with similar records have gotten in the past. Hawaii in 2007, for instance, was #11 after starting 11-0. Marshall, which has actually had a better schedule this season, was #19 after starting 11-0. I do think Marshall and Boise St. may each be a couple of spots too high in my ratings though.

I mentioned briefly last week why I had Boise St. ahead of Arizona, and now it’s similarly problematic to have Boise St. ahead of Baylor. There is a higher depth to Boise St.’s wins, but ultimately beating top-20 teams should be valued more highly. I want to try to find a way where beating #5 and #19 counts for more points than beating #20, #49, and #69. Those aren’t Boise St.’s three best wins (they beat two others in the top 60), but they just happened to combine for slightly more points than Baylor’s two best wins.

One way I thought of was adding some kind of additional credit for beating teams that end up with positive ratings (which is usually approximately the top 40). I won’t alter the formula at this point this season though. I will tinker with it after the final results of this year to see how it turns out. I will also look to see how it would alter previous ratings.

Something else I want to note is Boise St. actually has more FBS wins than Baylor because they played an extra game and did not play an FCS opponent. So where usually a team with two losses has fewer wins than one with a single loss, the two-loss team in question has more wins.

In an average playing week, Baylor did accumulate more points than Boise St. did in an average week.

One reason I say Marshall may be a spot or two too high is that I think Michigan St. should be in a major bowl. Their only losses are to teams I believe should be in the top 4. Wisconsin was technically the Big Ten runner-up, but they lost an additional game, and they lost to LSU and Northwestern. LSU isn’t a bad loss, but Northwestern is pretty bad. They don’t even qualify for a bowl game. I mention those together because they’re in the same conference.

I also think UCLA should be included in the top 6 bowls, while Georgia Tech should be excluded. The two teams finished with the same number of losses, and there were understandable losses by both and fairly weak losses by both. UCLA’s non-conference slate of Virginia, Memphis, and Texas, combined with the strength of the Pac-12 South relative to the ACC Coastal, should put them ahead.

Florida St. was actually two possessions ahead of Georgia Tech going into the last couple of minutes, which is a gigantic lead for the Seminoles, so the final score being two points doesn’t sway me. Also, I give them credit for the one strong out-of-conference win (albeit an extremely lucky one) against Georgia, but the others were Wofford, Tulane, and Georgia Southern.

I haven’t exactly made the case why UCLA should go ahead of Wisconsin or Michigan St. should go ahead of Georgia Tech, but hopefully you can fill in the blanks there.
The only other thing in the top 25 worth commenting on is a team that hadn’t been there since my (subjective) preseason ranking….

We can also add Northern Illinois to the list of “group of five” teams that may be a spot or two too high. After Arkansas’s games against LSU and Ole Miss made that blowout loss more understandable, that only leaves one other loss for the Huskies against 11 wins. Like Boise St., Northern Illinois goes up an extra spot for playing an extra game. If I averaged by playing week, they would have stayed behind Louisville.

By turkey, of course I mean football and the coming bowl season. The bird isn’t anything to get excited about really, but it can make an excellent sandwich to accompany football-watching.

First of all, I wanted to remind my All-Blogger voters to get their submissions in. About half of the ballots are still missing. None will be accepted after the first game kicks off on Thanksgiving, which is right about the time I plan to post it.

LSU-Arkansas (Friday on CBS) will be an afterthought among all the interesting games in the next few days, but I originally wrote this blog back in 2006, and it’s what touched off my successful (for me, anyway) Rivalry Series. So if you have any interest at all, please check it out.

Sometimes I wonder if articles are written for Bleacher Report just to annoy me. I used to suspect the same thing of Sporting News. Not me in particular, but they want to get under fans’ skin to get more hits. Brian Pedersen is a “Featured Columnist” on the site, and based on the way his “Which Teams Got Screwed in Week 14 Standings?” column is written, he doesn’t understand how the BCS rankings work after 15 years. The rankings will cease to exist in a couple of weeks. Have some respect.

• explain why Clemson (10-1) got passed by Missouri in the latest standings, despite both teams winning? Yes, Clemson moved up from seventh to sixth

> So let me get this straight. Getting “screwed” means not moving up ENOUGH after beating an FCS opponent? Does it not occur to him that Missouri beat a ranked Ole Miss team. Maybe there are times when beating a ranked team should move you ahead of someone even if that other team doesn’t lose. Is that so hard to imagine? I know a few other teams beat Ole Miss, but let’s review who they were: Alabama, Auburn, and Texas A&M. Ole Miss has beaten LSU, Texas, and Vanderbilt. Even if you’re not convinced Ole Miss is a good win, let me float this idea: Maybe Clemson shouldn’t have been ahead of Missouri in the first place. This doesn’t convey a highly fundamental misconception of the BCS. Maybe he figured the pollsters would penalize Missouri for what they knew would be a boost in the computers, I don’t know. But wait for it.

> He then mentions South Carolina didn’t lose ground after a similar game. NEITHER DID CLEMSON! He also mentions LSU climbed after beating an FCS opponent “and not just because teams above it lost”. Staying at 13th isn’t climbing. Missouri lost to a team called South Carolina. Guess what Clemson can do if they belong ahead of Missouri?

• But did the (Baylor) Bears‘ loss to Oklahoma State—arguably the hottest team in college football right now and currently ranked seventh—justify dropping from fourth to ninth?

>> Falling 5 spots after being blown out seems reasonable to me. LSU was in the Alabama game until the fourth quarter, and they fell 8 spots. This is the same guy who tries to argue there is a double standard in favor of the SEC. If anything, if you’re further down to begin with, losing to a top team shouldn’t hurt you as much.

>> Another big complaint seems to be that Stanford—which beat Arizona St., Washington, UCLA, and Oregon—passed up the Bears. Let’s review Baylor’s best four wins: Oklahoma… Texas Tech, Buffalo, Kansas St. Utah went downhill since beating Stanford, but they’ve played all the best teams of both divisions (not to mention BYU and Utah St., both of whom they beat) and some of the losses were very close. Stanford just happened to be their lucky game. South Carolina might pass Baylor if they beat Clemson (which would at worst be their second win over a 2-loss team). I think that MAYBE trumps Oklahoma and Texas Tech perhaps?

• Michigan State (10-1) is locked into the Big Ten title game, where it will have a chance to earn an automatic BCS bid if it were to beat Ohio State in Indianapolis in two weeks.

>>> And best of luck to them. What’s the problem? Oh, they DIDN’T pass up the likes of Clemson and Baylor. So, the team that stays behind Clemson and Baylor got screwed. Clemson and Baylor also got screwed by not staying ahead of all the teams they had been ahead of. Wow. South Carolina is also ahead. He then mentions how Michigan St. should get more credit for winning its division. Baylor isn’t in a division. Michigan St., unlike Clemson, isn’t in a division with Florida St. Maybe he has a point with South Carolina (which won’t win its division unless Missouri loses to Texas A&M), but not if South Carolina beats Clemson.

• Fresno State (10-0) gave its home crowd a powerful sendoff by putting up 69 points against New Mexico on Saturday, getting 820 yards of total offense and seven touchdowns from superstar QB Derek Carr [but fell behind Northern Illinois]… You can probably chalk that up to NIU getting ESPN exposure on weeknights the past two weeks, while FSU was on the lesser-watched CBS Sports Network.

>>>> This is that one shining moment you’ve been waiting for. I seriously doubt a whole lot of voters dropped Fresno St. In fact, their points in both of the BCS polls went UP (maybe a little less than Northern Illinois’); but you know those computers? They don’t get impressed by scores, because the NCAA mandated that the computers couldn’t factor that in. They also don’t care what channel the games were played on. They care that Northern Illinois beat a team with only one other loss (Ball St.) and then another (Toledo) who had been 7-3. Before beating New Mexico (3-8), Fresno St. had a bye week. Those mean computers want you to prevail over actual competition. For shame!

There was some griping about Central Florida and Duke, not completely without merit. But it’s just reality that when it’s 2/3 human polls, they’re not going to start supporting teams that have been out of the spotlight as quickly as you might like. Central Florida wasn’t realistically going to go ahead of undefeated Northern Illinois and Fresno St., but they don’t have to worry about that since all they have to do is win their conference anyway. Duke (with two losses) is behind a few teams with three losses. Maybe they have an argument to be ahead of USC, UCLA, or both; but do we have to pretend the SEC West is roughly equivalent to the ACC Coastal?

Finally, he complains about Cincinnati, with the worst schedule in college football other than possibly Old Dominion, which played mostly FCS schools. Cincinnati was absolutely destroyed by Illinois. The Illini have three other wins, but none of those victories were against teams with a single FBS win of their own. The Bearcats also lost to South Florida, whose one other FBS win was over Connecticut. Cincinnati did beat SMU, Rutgers, and Houston in consecutive weeks, but that doesn’t make up for those losses. The best win before those? 3-7 Memphis.

The same guy also did the bowl projections for this week. I know this will come as a shock to fans of the Stanford Cardinal, but even if they beat Notre Dame, the chances of playing for a national championship are approximately 0. He also assumes Texas will beat that great Baylor team he complains about and play Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl since LSU has three losses. Uhhh, Texas A&M does too; and furthermore, he projects Missouri to beat the Aggies! I had been wondering who to cheer for in this game since I think I might like to see South Carolina play Auburn or Alabama more than Missouri, but it’s clear now. The thought of LSU getting passed up for the Cotton Bowl again despite beating A&M again is a bit frustrating for me, so I’ll be cheering for all three SEC Tiger teams.

This is the first week I remember where I have the same members of the top 25 as the AP poll. Different order of course, but I guess it’s just more obvious than usual. I think the blogger poll last week with only three members of the “others receiving votes” category was another indication.

The main point of my computer rankings is trying to get the right teams at the top. If the seasons were over for Ohio St. and Florida St., they should play in one semifinal with the winner playing the winner of the Iron Bowl. Seems right to me. Missouri could possibly pass up the Buckeyes, but since either Alabama or Auburn will lose, that probably will not cause a problem.

Arizona St. is interesting. Arizona would now count almost as much as Michigan would for Ohio St. I don’t think Stanford would count for that much more than Michigan St., but Stanford still has Notre Dame to play. It’s something to watch at least. Also, it’s a reminder of why I need to make sure losses hurt a team more than wins help a team.

Speaking of which, I think LSU would beat the lowest 5 teams ahead of them (at least), but the idea is three losses should put you a decent distance outside of title contention. Why so many spots? Well, the distance between Oklahoma at #15 and LSU at #23 in terms of points is less than that between #1 Florida St. and #4 Ohio St. Fifteenth or maybe even 20th without better wins (other than Auburn and Texas A&M, LSU hasn’t beaten anyone else in the top 70) is too high for a 3-loss team at this point, especially when two of the losses were against unranked teams. But if LSU were to win a bowl game against a good team (after beating Arkansas, of course), they could climb up into that range. Anyway, I’m still glad in a way that LSU could be ranked again after falling so low. It stops me from seeing my formula as overly punitive of losses.

I realize Notre Dame is a little higher than LSU despite also having three losses. The losses are similar, but the Irish have wins over three ranked teams: Arizona St., Michigan St., and USC. LSU only has wins roughly comparable to Arizona St. and USC. Also, the best unranked team LSU has beaten is all the way down at #66 (Mississippi St.), while Notre Dame has beaten two additional teams in the top 60 (Navy and BYU).

I guess I should also address Texas A&M and USC. The Aggies don’t have any wins over top-25 teams. Their best wins are Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, Rice, and Mississippi St. The losses, to the three other ranked SEC West teams, are better than either Notre Dame’s or LSU’s, but that alone isn’t enough to put them higher. USC’s loss to Washington St. isn’t that bad at this point. The Cougars have risen to #51, not much lower than Pittsburgh. Arizona St. and Notre Dame are of course ranked in the top 25. Although it doesn’t have enough big wins to surpass Notre Dame, USC does have the big win over Stanford. The Arizona win over Oregon this weekend was also beneficial (USC played Arizona but not Oregon). Boston College Is close to being in the top 40, so that’s a win that’s surprisingly helpful. I think you can follow the logic to see why UCLA is the 5th-best 3-loss team in my rankings.

I also like that Baylor stayed in the top 10. I think my formula does well to place them there.

I can see people being unhappy with Michigan St.’s position, but the Spartans have lost to the only ranked team they’ve played (Notre Dame), and the best team they’ve beaten is now Minnesota. Michigan and Nebraska are not far behind, but that’s not a top-10 resume to me. Had the Spartans had another bye week instead of the loss to Notre Dame, they would be #8 though. Had they beaten the Irish, they would be in the top 5; but I’m not sure how high.

I’m going to try to post something tomorrow about inter-conference games, but it might have to wait until next week. For now, I’m just going to post and discuss the All Blogger Poll.
We have one new voter taking the place of one we had the last couple of weeks, so we’re staying at six. I’ll just say that the voter who happens to be a Michigan fan didn’t submit a proper ballot and was probably not being serious anyway. Anyway, we have a new voter who’s not particularly a fan of any team, but he’s from Texas and now lives in the Los Angeles area, if that means anything.
The returning voters, if you’re not familiar, are an LSU fan, a Texas fan, an Oklahoma fan, a Notre Dame fan, and I (I’m an LSU fan who almost exclusively relies on my computer formula). I’m still open to allowing new voters, I think one with allegiances on either coast might be a nice addition. I think we all try to be reasonably fair, but there are some cases where bias creeps in a bit.

I’ll just make a few comments about the changes to the rankings in this poll and will post them below.

Although Florida St. is 6 points behind for #1, they could challenge if not overtake Alabama with an impressive performance this weekend. They are third, fourth, and fifth on three of the ballots, so they could become #1 by passing up the Tide in two of them or even by being second in all three. Alabama is idle this week after winning by 25 points or more in the last 6 consecutive weeks. On the other hand, none apart from Ole Miss are top 25 candidates in the near future (and Ole Miss hasn’t even gotten any votes here yet). Oregon and Stanford are also idle before facing one another on Nov. 9.

Oklahoma went from #15 into the top 10 after beating Texas Tech, which only fell 4 spots. South Carolina improved from #19 to #13 by beating Missouri, which fell from #4 to #8.
Virginia Tech and UCLA went from Nos. 13 and 14 to barely staying in the top 25 after losses.

There are less clear reasons, other than the change in voters, but there were also notable ranking improvements for Miami, Northern Illinois, Michigan, Michigan St., and Louisville.

BYU, Duke, and Texas St. are all receiving a vote for the first time this week. Houston received votes after not getting any last week. 33 teams got votes this week, and a total of 6 others have gotten votes in prior weeks.

It’s almost October, and that’s when my full computer ratings go online. There are still several teams that have strengths of schedules that are too bad to be rated the normal way, so it’s usually good to wait that additional week.

However, I did run the numbers to give me a rating. The top 25 overlapped a lot more than it usually does. I noticed that with the major polls as well. I guess there just isn’t that much competition among teams that might be vying for a top 25 spot this year. The teams that are playing serious competition and doing well are fairly easy to recognize without delving too deeply.

I decided the best approach would be to make this a transitional week between subjective rankings and strictly going on the computer formula. Sometimes I move one or two teams around on this blog even after I go to the computers, but that’s only to keep the top 5 (and sometimes just the top 1) from being too chaotic. Alabama came out first, so maybe next week will be 100% based on the computers. To be clear, I do not ever alter the order on my computer ratings site.

Washington is one of the best teams in the formula right now. Often, teams like that peak too soon, but they might be awfully close to Alabama if not ahead if the Huskies beat Stanford next week. Likewise, Stanford may have the top rating if they win.

Anyway, my basic approach for this week was to rank the teams the way I’ve been doing and then add that ranking to the (preliminary, unpublished) computer ranking. Lower number = better team. I did make a few adjustments from there. I included one team (Florida) that didn’t make the top 25 after that procedure and excluded one (Missouri) that did; but like I was saying, there really isn’t that much to choose from when rounding out the top 25 anyway.

Florida came out #26 when I added the two numbers together, and Missouri came out #21. I will put Missouri in if they win next week and are in the computer top 25, but I don’t think it’s out of place to be a little bit hesitant there. Vanderbilt probably isn’t too great this season, but at least beating them would show Missouri may be moving up in the SEC East. I’m not convinced of that yet.

You’ll notice Texas A&M is a bit down, but apart from the loss to Alabama (all losses are negative in my system), they haven’t really played anyone. “Johnny Football” dancing around the field just doesn’t impress the mathematics of what that team has done so far. Even if you look at ease of victory (which does not affect them in my ratings), the final scores are really not that great: for instance, the point totals given up to Rice and Sam Houston St. and the fact that Arkansas was in Saturday’s game well into the fourth quarter. Anyway, I put the Aggies higher than they would be if I had just added the two rankings together. The computer formula did not even put them in the top 25. Of course, if they start beating teams like Auburn and Ole Miss (their next two opponents), I would expect them to get a little bit closer to their poll ranking.

There were a few other minor examples, but I don’t think I moved any other teams more than a couple of spots from where the numbers mentioned put them. Ohio St. might be 3 positions higher. I still want to give them some credit for the winning streak, and they will be playing an apparently decent team again next week. I didn’t want to move them down drastically to possibly move them back up anyway.

I expect a similarly reasonable transition between this week and next week. At least I think this one is reasonable. I know we have to wait another year for the top-4 system to be implemented, but I couldn’t help but notice how well what I have so far would fit that. SEC champion + Pac-12 champion + Clemson + Ohio St. It never quite happens the way you think it might two months from the end of the regular season though.

Comments
I know people aren’t going to be happy with this necessarily, but I really believe that at least the top 10 or so is exactly as it should be.

Notre Dame has the best collection of wins, followed by Florida. If Florida simply hadn’t played Georgia and played out the rest of the season, they would be ahead of Ohio St. despite having played one fewer game. Also, if you were to give Florida a win over Alabama (while still leaving off the Georgia loss), there is a good chance the Gators would be ahead of Notre Dame.

I do give Ohio St. a poor strength of schedule rating, but that doesn’t mean the Buckeyes were untested. They defeated a 10-win team, a 9-win team, and three 8-win teams. The only team in the top 8 of the Big Ten standings that the Buckeyes avoided playing was Northwestern. All but the most die-hard SEC supporters would not likely be complaining if the Buckeyes were not on probation and were set to play in the BCS championship game as the undefeated Big Ten champions.

As to Florida being ahead of Alabama, I simply think Florida has the better collection of wins.

When you go much further below the top 40, I don’t think that’s especially relevant for conversations about how to rank the top 5, but even if we cover the top 60, Alabama is still 4-1 while Florida improves all the way to 7-1. Also see my chart in last week’s (actually Friday’s) comments.

I don’t regard Georgia as a worse loss than Texas A&M, but whether you do or not, I don’t think that overcomes the difference in quality wins.

If you think the BCS should have a rule that only conference champions should be considered, then I think many would agree with my ratings that the best two conference champions are Alabama and Stanford. If independents are exceptions to this rule, then this would give you Alabama and Notre Dame, exactly what is going to happen.

Kansas St. would take exception to being behind Stanford among champions, but the Wildcats didn’t beat anyone in my top 10 and only two teams in my top 40. Stanford does have two losses to one, but one of those losses was to Notre Dame, a team that happened to beat Oklahoma, Kansas St.’s best win by far.

Stanford lost to a fairly mediocre Washington team, but there isn’t a big gap between Washington and Baylor. Stanford won six games against my top 40 to Kansas St.’s two. I purposely make wins and losses count a lot here, but it only goes so far.

I can imagine some grumblings over South Carolina being ahead of LSU. LSU did beat the Gamecocks after all. There are a couple of very minor things that could have changed this.
One would have been LSU scoring a couple more points or allowing a couple fewer points against the Gamecocks. While margin of victory is not generally a relevant factor for me, home teams have a historical advantage of around 3 points per game, and home teams win about 5% more often.

Some compensate for this discrepancy by eliminating the point difference (this is done in ratings that include margin of victory of course, usually ones that have something to do with betting since it can be added or subtracted based on the location of a given game), and some compensate by uniformly counting home wins less and away wins more (and usually also home losses more and away losses less).

Since I think the advantage is generally in close games, I do a bit of a hybrid. If a game is decided by three points or fewer (which is also useful because it so happens to be a field goal… often a couple more first downs during the course of a game would have given a team a field goal where in a drive where it ended up with no points or even a touchdown rather than a field goal) or in overtime (obviously, one more point on either side would have avoided overtime in the first place), I only give the home team 90% of the win (not 95% because I don’t give it 5% of a loss), and I penalize the away team 10% less (not 5% because I don’t give it 5% of a win).

So while LSU has slightly better wins and a better second loss (both lost to Florida; Alabama is regarded as slightly better than LSU), it doesn’t show up that way. Lessening South Carolina’s penalty for losing to LSU makes the LSU loss seem to be a better loss than Alabama.

Another way LSU ends up ahead would have been if Washington had not blown an 18-point fourth-quarter lead and lost to Washington St. in overtime.

Maybe the bowl games will sort out this discrepancy anyway.

There may also be some unhappiness over Oklahoma staying ahead of Texas A&M, but this is another very close call. Texas A&M lost to my #3 and #9 while Oklahoma lost to my #1 and #7. As to the wins, while #4 is obviously a much better win than #28, don’t forget that Texas A&M played two fewer games against AQ-level opponents and one more game against an FCS opponent.

While the proper order of the teams beyond this point is not the objective of my ratings and I do not necessarily endorse this order, it does make some sense. If there were a 25-team playoff (god forbid), they would all have good arguments for inclusion.

San Jose St. does seem unusually high, but they were second for a conference championship behind Utah St. In this conference, Louisiana Tech finished 3rd even though the Bulldogs only fell a two-point conversion short of taking Texas A&M to overtime. San Jose St. itself only lost at Stanford by 3 points. San Jose St. may not beat Clemson or Florida St. on a neutral field, but I don’t think many expected them to win 10 games regardless of the opposition. As to Utah St. (San Jose St.’s other loss), the Aggies only lost to Wisconsin (Big Ten champions) by 2 points and to BYU (which San Jose St. beat) by 3 points. I would also note that BYU lost at Notre Dame by only 3 points.

Oregon St. beat Wisconsin and BYU (despite going on to lose three games overall), so it makes sense that the Beavers are ahead of the Aggies.

Florida St. won the ACC. They beat Clemson but had the worse conference loss, to North Carolina St., so they’re a very small distance behind the Tigers.

Northern Illinois won the MAC championship with only a single loss all season (to Iowa), and Boise St. was the best team in the three-way tie atop the Mountain West (with Fresno St. and San Diego St., both of whom finished just out of the top 25). Boise St. also lost to a mediocre Big Ten team in Michigan St., so this is another reminder to give Ohio St. a bit of credit.
Louisville of course wrapped up the Big East and won 10 games this season.

Northwestern and Michigan were also good enough against quality competition to make the top 25. Michigan of course played Ohio St. in inter-division play and Notre Dame and Alabama out of conference, so this helped make up for having one fewer win than Northwestern does, but still the Wildcats have a slight edge.

Ball St. has won six straight since losing to both MAC-title contestants in back-to-back weeks and the Cardinals’ only other loss was to Clemson. The Cardinals beat Indiana and South Florida. Granted, those aren’t great AQ opponents, but the AQ performance looks a lot better than that by either Northern Illinois or Kent St. (which lost to Kentucky). More impressive than that, they also defeated Toledo (which lost to Arizona in overtime and beat Cincinnati) to end the Rockets’ 8-game winning streak.

Arkansas St. won the Sun Belt and hasn’t lost since September. Along with the one in-conference slip-up against Western Kentucky, the Red Wolves’ only other losses were to Nebraska and Oregon.

Stanford benefited from its win over Oregon and passed up Georgia, LSU, and Nebraska. Ole Miss isn’t a bad win this year, but it wasn’t quite enough to put LSU ahead of Georgia, which defeated Georgia Southern. Minnesota isn’t a bad win either, so Nebraska (which will likely play Wisconsin for the Big Ten championship) is still close to LSU.

The winner of Clemson/South Carolina may be a threat to one or more of these teams. Texas A&M isn’t likely to gain much by beating Missouri. Florida St. is still on the periphery of national-title conversation, and the Seminoles have a chance to leap some teams by beating Florida.

Oregon St. has a chance to be the spoilers against Oregon, which would put Stanford in the Pac-12 title game and a rematch with UCLA, which is also Stanford’s opponent this weekend. The Beavers could move up a few spots as well.

The winner of Bedlam should pass up some teams. Oklahoma St. is #26. As expected, Oklahoma passed up Texas in the Longhorns’ bye week.

Rutgers, which beat Cincinnati to move up a few spots, should stay ahead of Texas by winning and may pass up losers of other games.

Most of the bottom was fairly steady. San Jose St. got some credit for beating BYU. Utah St. won the big WAC game of the year, while Northern Illinois won a major conference game over Toledo in the MAC.

It’s sad that beating USC doesn’t do UCLA more good. I almost feel sorry for the Trojans. That loss to Cal is still a big negative for UCLA to contend with. Northwestern recovered from losing to Michigan in the previous week by beating Michigan St. Not a great win, but there was enough movement by other teams to give the Wildcats an opening. Michigan still theoretically has a chance to win the Big Ten.